His basketball career would end after he tore his patellar tendon during his junior year of college. Though more interested in pursuing a coaching career, he allowed his mother, a woman who had grown up during the days of Jim Crow, to convince him to toss his hat into the political ring. Having lived through enough of his own experiences with racism, Ennis knew politics was the primary arena where change needed to be made.

His stepfather had connections with the Republican Party in Philadelphia. A fierce Democrat, Chaney nevertheless believed he could effect more change as a Republican candidate. Applying the same work ethic, passion, and intensity that allowed him to excel on the playing field, Ennis quickly rose through the ranks of the blue-collar city’s politicians, never afraid to speak his mind, always looking to go out on a limb to help the underdog.

Despising laziness and lack of self-control among his peers, he became a breath of fresh air and something of a folk hero in Philadelphia. Deputy Mayor Chaney soon became Mayor Chaney. Years later, he would run for senator from Pennsylvania and win in a rout.

Now, less than two months from the November 2012 election, the president of the United States had come calling, urging him to join the ticket as his running mate. Ennis Chaney—the dirt-poor kid from Jacksonville, Florida—a veritable heartbeat away from the most powerful office in the world.

He stares out the window as the limo turns onto the Capital Beltway. Death frightens Ennis Chaney. There is no hiding from it and no reasoning with it. It provides no answers, only questions and confusion, tears and eulogies—far too many eulogies. How can one sum up a loved one’s life in twenty minutes? How can anyone expect him to translate a lifetime of caring into mere words?

Vice president. Chaney shakes his head, allowing his mind to wrestle with his future.

It is not his future that concerns him as much as the burden his candidacy would place on his wife and family. Becoming a senator was one thing, accepting the Republican nomination as the first African-American vice president was an entirely different matter. The last and only Black who held a legitimate chance of being elected to the White House was Colin Powell, and the general had eventually backed off, citing family concerns. If Mailer won reelection, Chaney would be the favorite to run in 2016. Like Powell, he knew his popularity crossed political and racial lines, but there was always a small segment of the population that, like death, couldn’t be reasoned with.

And he had already put his family through so much.

Chaney also knows Pierre Borgia is hot for the ticket, and wonders how far the Secretary of State will go to get what he wants. Borgia is everything Chaney is not; brash, self-serving, politically motivated, egotistical, a bachelor, a military hawk—and white.